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Establishing the effectiveness of a gratitude diary intervention on children’s

sense of school belonging

Tara Diebel, Colin Woodcock, Claire Cooper and Catherine Brignell

Abstract

Aim: The promotion of wellbeing in schools using evidence-based interventions from

the field of Positive Psychology is a growing area of interest. These interventions are

based on the principle that sustainable changes in wellbeing can be achieved through

regularly engaging in simple and intentional activities. This study examines the

effectiveness of a school-based gratitude diary intervention to promote school

belonging for primary school aged pupils (age range 7-11 years).

Method: The intervention took place in a one form entry primary school for four

weeks and involved participants writing a diary about things that they were either

grateful for in school that day or about neutral school events.

Findings: Participants who completed the gratitude intervention demonstrated

enhanced school belonging and gratitude relative to the control group, although this

was moderated by gender with the gratitude diary showing clearer benefits for males.

Increases in gratitude were positively correlated with increases in school belonging.

Limitations: The lack of a follow-up measure meant that it was not determined

whether positive outcomes were maintained. Participants’ diary entries were not

analysed for content.

Conclusions: The findings extend the evidence base concerning the use of gratitude

diaries with children and indicate that this intervention can be beneficial for children

younger than research has previously demonstrated. This study also illustrates how a

GRATITUDE DIARIES AND SENSE OF SCHOOL BELONGING 2

gratitude diary intervention can be used to build social resources and makes a novel

connection between gratitude and sense of belonging. Implications for how this

simple intervention has the potential to have a systemic impact on the wellbeing of

pupils and staff are discussed.

Key words: gratitude, gratitude intervention, sense of school belonging


The construct of gratitude is gaining wide attention in the field of positive psychology, an

area of research that aims to gain greater understanding of how positive emotions and

character traits can contribute to positive wellbeing (Seligman et al., 2005). Advocates of

positive psychology assert that interventions that prompt people to engage in simple

intentional activities can be more effective in promoting wellbeing compared to striving to

change their circumstances (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006). A growing area of interest

within positive psychology is the potential for organisations like schools to promote

wellbeing and resilience alongside achievement-related outcomes (Bird & Markle, 2012;

Seligman et al., 2009). The current study seeks to investigate the impact of a school-based

gratitude intervention to increase levels of the sense of school belongingness (SoSB).

Gratitude arises following help from others, but is also a process that involves

awareness of and appreciation on positive aspects of life (Wood, Froh & Geraghty, 2010).

The empirical literature concerning gratitude has mainly involved adults, and has used cross-

sectional and longitudinal designs to examine how gratitude is associated with a wide variety

of factors related to wellbeing. For example, positive emotions and optimism (Hill &

Allemand, 2011; McCullough, Emmons & Tsang, 2002), positive memory bias (Watkins,

Grimm & Kolts, 2004), positive reframing (Lambert, Fincham & Stillman, 2012) and life

satisfaction (Park, Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Wood, Joseph & Maltby, 2008). Trait

gratitude has been shown to uniquely predict levels of wellbeing, above the effect of thirty

other personality traits (Wood, Joseph & Maltby, 2009). Gratitude has been found to be

negatively correlated with stress (Wood et al., 2008), burnout (Chan, 2010) and buffer the

effect of two suicide risk factors: hopelessness and depressive symptoms (Kleiman et al.,

2013). There are many hypotheses about the psychological mechanisms that influence the

relationship between gratitude and wellbeing. Gratitude is a trait that is hypothesised to

foster a positive bias towards interpreting help as more beneficial and people’s behaviour as


more altruistic (Wood et al., 2010). Gratitude is also thought to promote resilience as it

provides an adaptive coping mechanism for dealing with negative life events (Lambert et al.,

2012; Watkins et al., 2008). These hypotheses are in line with Fredrickson’s broaden-and-

build theory (Fredrickson, 2001), which suggests that the evolutionary mechanism of positive

emotions is to broaden people’s thought-action repertoire and build personal resources.

Fredrickson has argued that “Gratitude, like other positive emotions, broadens and builds”

(Fredrickson, 2004, p1). Gratitude is thought to be linked to wellbeing because it promotes

creative thinking, positive emotions and positive reflection (Emmons & McCullough, 2003;

Fredrickson). Research has also linked gratitude to wellbeing through the building of social

resources such as increasing feelings of connectedness (Froh, Bono & Emmons, 2010), pro-

social emotions such as forgiveness, compassion, trust and empathy (Dunn & Schweitzer,

2005; Hill & Allemand, 2011; McCullough et al., 2001) and increasing perception of social

support (Algoe, Haidt & Gable, 2008; Wood et al., 2008). In addition, gratitude has been

found to be a moral reinforcer, which motivates people to carry out pro-social behaviour

(McCullough et al., 2001).

The psychological literature has started to examine the causal effects of gratitude using

a gratitude diary (i.e. writing down the things that one is grateful for in life) in comparison to

a control group or an alternative intervention. Many of these studies replicate the

methodology of Emmons & McCullough (2003), who asked participants to reflect things they

were grateful for on a daily or weekly basis. Much of the published literature on gratitude

diaries uses adult participants (e.g. Chan, 2013; Kaplan et al., 2013; Ouweneel, Le Blanc &

Schaufeli, 2014) with only two studies to date involving children and adolescents (Froh et al.,

2008; Owens & Patterson, 2013). Research has shown that across all age ranges, gratitude

diary interventions have the potential to increase many of the outcomes observed in the cross-

sectional and longitudinal research mentioned earlier, such as positive emotions (Emmons &


McCullough, 2003; Martinez-Marti, Avia & Hernandez-Lloreda, 2010; Ouweneel et al.,

2014; Sergeant & Mongrain, 2011) and life satisfaction (Chan, 2013; Emmons &

McCullough, 2003, Lambert et al., 2013). They have demonstrated some efficacy to reduce

levels of negative affect (Chan, 2013; Emmons & McCullough, 2003, Geraghty, Wood &

Hyland, 2010). Despite gratitude having a strong association with the building of social

resources, only four studies have investigated the impact of a gratitude diary intervention on

pro-social behaviours or pro-social emotions (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Froh et al.,

2008; Lambert et al., 2010; Martinez-Marti et al., 2010). In Emmons and McCullough

(2003), participants in the daily gratitude diary intervention were more likely to report that

they had offered emotional support compared to two control conditions. Martinez-Marti et

al. (2010) largely replicated the methodology of Emmons and McCullough (2003). They also

asked participants to rate the quality of their relationship with a significant other, how

sensitive they had been to other peoples’ needs, and included an observer report of

participant’s sensitivity to others needs. None of the social outcome measures were

significant, however a trend was found for the quality of relationships (p =.072) compared to

both a hassle diary condition and a neutral diary condition. Froh et al. (2008) measured self-

rated pro-social behaviour but did not find any significant outcomes. Finally, Lambert et al.

(2010) investigated the impact of a gratitude intervention on communal strength, the sense of

responsibility the participant feels for their partner’s welfare. The study used a novel

intervention and asked participants to increase the frequency that they expressed gratitude to

their partner. The results indicated that this intervention yielded significantly higher

increases in communal strength compared to paying attention to grateful events or sharing

positive events with a partner. No information was reported about the comparison between

paying attention to grateful events and sharing positive events, so it is not known if simply

paying attention to grateful events had an impact on feelings of communal strength.


There are a number of limitations in the published literature using adult participants that

make it difficult to generalise about the effectiveness of gratitude diaries in promoting

wellbeing (see Wood et al., 2010). For example, many of the gains were only in relation to a

hassle diary, first used in Emmons and McCullough (2003) (e.g. Chan, 2013; Emmons &

McCullough, 2003; Froh et al., 2008; Martinez-Marti et al., 2010). It has been argued that

the hassle diary is not an effective control group as it is designed to induce negative affect,

and therefore it exaggerates the differences between groups (Froh , Miller & Snyder, 2009;

Wood et al., 2010). Many studies did not find any significant impact on components of

wellbeing such as a reduction in negative affect (e.g. Chan, 2011; Emmons & McCullough,

2003; Flinchbaugh, et al., 2012; Sergeant & Mongrain, 2011). The variation in type, length

and frequency of intervention makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the contexts in

which interventions are more effective than others. Finally, a manipulation check to ensure

that the intervention is effective in increasing gratitude was only administered in the minority

of studies (Chan, 2013; Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Martinez-Marti et al., 2010), which

limits conclusions as to whether felt gratitude was the mechanism that mediated the observed

increase in outcome measures.

The outcomes of gratitude interventions with children and adolescents have also been

mixed and suffer from many of the limitations observed in the adult literature. For example,

Froh et al. (2008) investigated a gratitude diary intervention with young adolescents aged 11-

13 years old. The gratitude diary was effective in eliciting an increase in gratitude and

optimism, but only in relation to a hassle diary. There were no significant findings related to

social behaviour, positive affect or overall life satisfaction. However, a noteworthy outcome

in Froh et al. was that participants in the gratitude diary condition reported a significant

increase in school satisfaction compared to the hassle and event diary conditions. These

significant effects were maintained at a three-week follow up. This notable increase in school


satisfaction was present despite participants not being asked specifically to write about their

school experiences. The authors acknowledged that the lack of a coded analysis of the diary

entries to further investigate this effect was a limitation of the study (Froh et al., 2008).

Owens and Patterson (2013) also used a gratitude diary intervention, with children aged 5-11

years old. One strength of the study was that the intervention was adapted to reflect the

academic skills of the participants and involved drawing pictures of things they were grateful

for instead of writing. The study found that the intervention was not effective in eliciting

increases in life satisfaction, positive and negative affect or self-esteem compared to a neutral

diary or an optimism diary. The authors suggest that the instructions of the gratitude task

may have impacted on the effectiveness of the intervention, as it could have led them to focus

on immediate or novel experiences, rather than on continuing general experiences or

relationships (Owens & Patterson, 2013). The contents of the diaries were analysed in this

study, however this hypothesis was not directly investigated. Another limitation of this study

was that levels of gratitude were not measured as a manipulation check of the intervention.

A difficulty of using gratitude interventions with children is the lack of a clear evidence

base to suggest the developmental trajectory of gratitude and establish at what age the

concept of gratitude can be understood. Researchers in the field of gratitude theorise that due

to the cognitive complexities of understanding gratitude, such as attributing an external

source for a positive outcome, understanding the intentionality of others and empathetic

emotions; gratitude is likely to emerge during middle childhood and continues to develop

towards adolescence (Froh et al., 2007; Froh, Yurkewicz & Kashdan, 2009b; Nelson et al.,

2012; Owens & Patterson, 2013). However, there has been limited empirical evidence to

support this. It is argued that in order to generate further research, more studies are needed to

validate psychological scales that measure gratitude in children (Froh et al., 2011).

Within the field of positive psychology, there is increasing evidence that individual


differences can contribute to the effectiveness of interventions (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009).

The literature evaluating gratitude interventions has found that the characteristics of

participants may moderate the effectiveness of the intervention. For example, it has been

found that trait gratitude and trait positive affect measured pre-intervention has a moderating

effect on the gratitude interventions (Chan, 2010; Rash, Matsuba & Prkachin, 2011; Froh et

al., 2009a). Froh et al. found that when these moderating factors were taken into account,

significant differences were found between the gratitude intervention and the neutral event

control group for participants low in both trait gratitude and positive affect. This evidence

suggests that gratitude diaries are particularly beneficial for certain groups of people. The

current study will explore factors related to participants’ gender and eligibility of free school

meals (FSM) (an indicator of socio-economic disadvantage), as these factors have been found

to affect level of SoSB (Goodenow, 1993; Frederickson et al., 2007). There is not yet any

published evidence that specifically investigates the effectiveness of gratitude interventions

related to these groups. Emerging research on gender differences in the expression of

gratitude suggests that males are less inclined to do this than females (e.g. Kashdan et al.,

2009; Thompson, Peura & Gayton, 2015), but only one study examines the impact of gender

on gratitude using child aged participants (Froh et al., 2009a). Owen & Patterson (2013)

investigated the impact of gender on the content of the gratitude diaries but found no

significant association between content and gender. No analysis was reported related to the

effectiveness of the intervention in regard to gender differences.

The rationale of this study aims to extend the research which has found an association

between gratitude and the building of social resources, such as feelings of connectedness

(Froh et al., 2010), pro-social emotions such as forgiveness (McCullough et al., 2001) and

trust (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005), perception of social support (Algoe et al., 2008; Wood et

al., 2008) and pro-social behaviour (Froh et al., 2009b). The available evidence suggests that


gratitude diary interventions have the potential to increase pro-social behaviours (Emmons &

McCullough, 2003; Froh et al., 2008; Martinez-Marti et al., 2011) and feelings of communal

strength towards a partner (Lambert et al., 2010). The current study will expand upon the

findings of Froh et al. (2008) and use a school-based intervention that induces participants’

feelings of gratitude specifically related to school, and examine whether this can lead to an

increased feeling of belonging towards school. We hypothesise that the effect of reflecting

on and experiencing gratitude about positive events in school could be a mechanism that

enhances participants’ SoSB.

Belonging can be considered as a psychological need to form and maintain social bonds

(Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Specifically sense of belonging at school involves “a

commitment to school and a belief that school is important. It also includes a positive

perception of the teacher-pupil relationship, relationship with peers and opportunities to be

involved in school life” (Prince & Hadwin, 2012, p.7). It is a construct associated with being

accepted and valued by others at school (Goodenow, 1993) and associated with many

positive outcomes for wellbeing, motivation and academic success (Prince & Hadwin, 2012).

Completing the diary could positively influence SoSB because it could lead to an increased

awareness of pro-social and positive behaviour from staff and peers, the perception of being

supported by others, the strengthening of friendships with peers and an appreciation of

positive behaviour from staff. No previous research has investigated the role of gratitude in

increasing psychological feelings of belonging. Research on school belonging has shown it is

inversely related to school dropout, and linked with engagement and interest in school,

positive relationships (Bond et al., 2007), intrinsic motivation and academic achievement

(Goodenow, 1993; Osterman, 2000). If the use of gratitude diaries can be shown to cause

participants to positively reflect on their school life and induce positive emotions, pro-social

behaviour and feelings of connectedness then this could create a positive feedback loop for


positive peer and teacher relationships, which could foster stronger bonds to school (Bono &

Froh, 2009).

To counter the limitations discussed of previous studies, a neutral control group rather

than a hassle diary group will be used. This approach also reduces ethical concerns over the

potential outcomes of asking children to reflect negatively on their school day with the use of

a hassle diary. A manipulation check will also be carried out to ensure that the intervention is

successful in increasing felt gratitude towards school. Differences between males and

females in changes in gratitude and SoSB will be explored.

Method

Design

Participants within each year group were randomly allocated to either a gratitude diary or an

event diary condition. Measures of gratitude and SoSB were taken before and the

intervention.

Participants

The participants were all from the Key Stage Two (KS2) (year groups 3 to 6, mean age 9

years 4 months) classes of a one-form entry (one class per year group) primary school in

Southampton, UK. All four classes in KS2 were included in the study. The head teacher at

the school authorised an opt-out consent procedure and every parent was given detailed

information about the study and the opportunity to withdraw their child from it; one parent

chose to do this. The initial sample consisted of 116 participants. However, participants’

data was not included in the analysis if school attendance during the intervention was below

80% for two weeks or more, or less than 40% for one week or more to ensure that all

participants were present to write at least 18/20 diary entries. Participants were also excluded


if they were absent on the day of data collection, or if the pattern of their data on the reverse

scored items suggested they did not understand the questions. The remaining sample

consisted of 100 children (see Table 1).

Table 1: Number of participants across year group and condition

Condition

Event diary Gratitude diary Total

Year 3 13 (7 males, 6 females) 12 (9 males, 3 females) 25



Year 6 13 (5males, 8 females) 12 (7 males, 5 females) 25

Total 51 (20 males, 31 females) 49 (31 males, 18 females) 100

Materials

The Belonging Scale, (Frederickson & Dunsmuir, 2009)

The Belonging Scale is designed to measure the extent to which a participant feels a sense of

belonging at school and was adapted from the Psychological Sense of School Membership

Scale (Goodenow, 1993) to make it suitable for British children and a younger age group.

The scale is a 12 item self-report questionnaire containing a three point response scale: ‘no

not true’, ‘not sure’ and ‘true’. This adapted questionnaire has been reported to have high

alpha reliability and consistency (Frederickson et al., 2007). In the current study, these items

formed an index with medium reliability, α = .74.

Gratitude to school questionnaire

To enable the measurement of gratitude to school, an adapted version of the GQ-6


(McCullough et al., 2002) was used. The GQ-6 is a six-item scale and is designed to measure

dispositional gratitude; the questionnaire has demonstrated properties of convergent validity

and reliability (alpha= 0.86) and test/retest reliability when used with adults (McCullough et

al., 2002). It has also been validated with younger participants aged 10-19 (Froh et al., 2011)

and was found to resemble similar properties of reliability and internal consistency (α = .88

for participants aged 10-11 years oldIt should however be noted that at ages 7-11 some of our

sample was even younger. For the first five questions, the only modification we made was the

addition of the word ‘school’ to make each question specific to school. Question six was

considered to be potentially too abstract for the participants of this age group and was

simplified from “Long amounts of time can go by before I feel grateful to something or

someone” to “I do not often find myself feeling grateful”. Subsequent analysis justified the

inclusion of this item, as the factor loading for the item was high and removal did not

improve reliability. Participants rated items on a ten-point rating scale (1= strongly disagree,

10 =strongly agree). In the current study, these items formed an index with medium

reliability, α = .74.

Information was also collected on participants’ gender and eligibility of free school

meals (FSM) (an indicator of socio-economic disadvantage).

Procedure

The method for the data collection was identical pre and post-intervention. Baseline

measures were collected two days before the start of the intervention and post-data was

collected on the last day of the intervention. Prior to collecting each data set, two of the

authors delivered a semi-scripted introduction to each class on the meaning of gratitude and

gave instructions on how to fill out the scales on both questionnaires. Questionnaires were

administered as a whole class, the Belonging Scale (Frederickson and Dunsmuir, 2009) being


administered first and followed by the adapted gratitude questionnaire. To control for

reading difficulties, the researcher read out each question whilst each participant completed

their questionnaire.

On the first day of the intervention, the diaries were introduced to the gratitude and

event group separately. Participants were not made aware that there were two different

groups within each class and the front cover of each diary looked identical, but contained

different instructions inside. Teachers were not informed about which students were assigned

to each group. Participants in the gratitude condition were given a semi-structured reminder

about the concept of gratitude and were each given a diary outlining the definition of

gratitude and a daily instruction of “write down 2 or 3 things that you are thankful or grateful

for today at school”. Participants in the control group were also given a semi-scripted

introduction to the task and were given diaries with the instruction “write down 2 or 3 things

that happened in school today”

The intervention was carried out for ten minutes in the afternoon of every school day

(Monday to Friday) for four weeks, resulting in a total number of 20 diary entries. At the end

of week one and week two, the researchers did a fidelity check to ensure that the intervention

was being carried out. The diaries were also checked at the end of the intervention and it was

seen that diaries were completed every day the participant was present at school.

Results

The data set contained no outliers or missing items, and there was no evidence of violation of

the assumptions of normal distribution and homogeneity of variance.

There was no significant association between FSM and condition (X2(1) = .63, p= .427), but

there was a significantly higher number of females in the control group and males in the


experimental group (X2(1) = 5.78, p = .016).

Descriptive Statistics

Means and standard deviations of the gratitude and sense of school belonging scores are

displayed in table 2.

Gratitude

As a manipulation check, the first part of the analysis examined whether the gratitude

intervention had a significant effect on level of gratitude to school compared to the control

condition.

A 2 (event vs. gratitude) x 2 (pre-intervention vs. post-intervention) x 2 (male vs

female) mixed ANOVA was conducted on the gratitude scores. This revealed that there was

a significant interaction between the time and condition, F(1, 96) = 15.94, p <.001, np2=.14,

indicating that the change in gratitude scores from pre to post-intervention was significantly

different in the gratitude diary group compared to the event group. The three way (time x

condition x gender) interaction, while suggesting a trend, was not significant, F(1, 96) = 3.91,

Table 2: Mean (s.d) Gratitude and Sense of School Belonging (SoSB) scores

Event Diary Gratitude Diary

Female Male Female Male

Pre-Intervention Gratitude 47.90 (10.67)

44.85 (11.97)

44.50 (12.02)

40.26 (13.33)

Post-intervention Gratitude 45.29 (10.94)

40.45 (13.20)

44.22 (15.16)

42.77 (12.41)

Pre-Intervention SoSB 31.32 (4.12)

27.60 (5.88)

28.11 (4.57)

29.19 (4.36)

Post-intervention SoSB 29.97 (4.51)

27.10 (5.50)

31.22 (3.06)

31.16 (3.52)


p =.051, np2=.04.. There was also a significant main effect of time, F(1, 96) = 4.25, p = .042,

np2=.04. On average gratitude declined during the study. While simple effects analyses

should be interpreted with caution, due to the interaction not being significant (table 3)

suggests that there was a decrease in gratitude in the control group irrespective of gender,

but that in the gratitude diary group only the males showed an increase in gratitude (although

the gratitude diary appeared to have protected the females from any significant decrease in

gratitude).

Table 3: Mean (s.e.) increase in gratitude (pre-intervention gratitude subtracted from post-

intervention gratitude), & simple effects analysis of the difference between pre and post intervention scores in each group.

Condition Gender Mean gratitude increase (s.e.) F(1,96) p

Event diary Female -2.613 (1.009) 6.70 .011

Male -4.400 (1.257) 12.26 .001

Gratitude diary Female -0.278 (1.325) .044 .834

Male 2.516 (1.009) 6.22 .014

There was no evidence that the three way interaction was driven by pre-existing differences

in gratitude, as a 2 x 2 (Gender x Diary) between group ANOVA showed no statistically

significant effects (Gender F(1,96) = 2.16, p = .145; Diary F(1,96) = 2.60, p = .111;

Interaction F(1,96) = .057, p =.811).

Sense of School Belonging

As this was the second outcome variable tested, a Bonferroni adjusted critical value of 0.025

(α = 0.05 / 2) was used when assessing whether results were significant. A 2 (event vs.

gratitude) x 2 (pre-intervention vs post-intervention) x 2 (male vs female) mixed ANOVA

was carried out to establish whether type of intervention had an effect on SoSB. There was a


significant interaction between time and type of intervention, F(1,96) = 28.30, p <.001, np2

=.23 (figure 1 #,i). Simple effects analyses found SoSB increased over time (mean increase =

2.54; F (1,96) = 29.41, p<.001, np2 = .235) in the gratitude diary group and showed a non-

significant decrease (mean increase = -0.927; F (1,96) = 4.19, p=.043, np2 = .042) in the

control group.

Figure 1: Estimated marginal mean Sense of School Belonging (SoSB) scores for the gratitude and

event diary groups at time 1=before intervention and time 2=after intervention

There was also a significant main effect of time, F(1, 96) = 6.119, p =.015, np2 =.06. The

condition x gender interaction F(1,96) = 4.91, p =.029, np2 =.049 suggested a trend towards

boys in the control group reporting a low sense of school belonging, compared to boys in

the gratitude diary group and both groups of girls who had a higher sense of school

belonging.


Change scores were calculated by subtracting the pre-intervention scores from the post-

intervention scores for both gratitude and sense of school belonging. Increase in gratitude

was correlated with increase in sense of school belonging (r (100) = .350, p<.001), there was

a positive relationship between the degree of change in gratitude and the degree of change in

SoSB over the course of the intervention.

Discussion

The present study represents the first to use a gratitude diary intervention that requires

children to write specifically about school. There have also only been two published studies

to date that have used gratitude diaries with primary school aged children. As predicted, the

study found the gratitude diary intervention had a beneficial effect on both gratitude towards

school and SoSB. Improvements in gratitude due to the gratitude diary appeared slightly, but

not significantly more pronounced in boys. Conversely, the control group who took part in

an event diary intervention showed decreases in gratitude and SoSB during the intervention.

In support of the notion that changes in gratitude drove the improvement in sense of school

belonging, changes in gratitude scores were found to be correlated with changes in SoSB

scores.

The results for the gratitude diary condition are consistent with the main hypothesis,

that inducing gratitude specific to school will increase students’ SoSB. It is also consistent

with previous research that has demonstrated positive effects of gratitude diary interventions

(e.g. Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Lambert et al., 2013). Specifically, the increase in

SoSB is also consistent with outcomes obtained by Froh et al. (2008) who found that a

school-based gratitude intervention with adolescents was linked to a significant increase in

school satisfaction. To make the results more comparable to Froh et al. (2008), it would have


been useful to conduct a three-week follow up to see if the positive outcomes were

maintained. A link between gratitude and feelings of psychological membership has not

previously been established in the psychological literature; the current study suggests that the

act of reflecting on positive experiences at school and experiencing gratitude towards them is

associated with an increase in SoSB. This is a key finding. It should be noted, however, that

more research is needed to establish whether it was specifically gratitude that was the

psychological mechanism that increased the SoSB: it could be argued that, although the

change in gratitude correlated significantly with the change in SoSB score, there were other

mechanisms which could have increased participants’ SoSB, such as positive affect, pro-

social behaviour, positive appraisal of teacher or pupil relationships. These variables could

be explored further by adding additional variables pre and post intervention or employing a

longitudinal design. In addition, while the gratitude manipulation appeared to protect female

pupils from the fall in gratitude observed in the control group, only males showed a

significant increase in gratitude scores following the gratitude diary intervention. This was

an unexpected finding insofar as the literature on gender differences in the expression of

gratitude suggests that males are less inclined to this activity than females (e.g. Kashdan et

al., 2009; Thompson et al., 2015). It is possible gratitude was already at ceiling level in the

girls in our study, however there was no evidence that baseline levels of gratitude were

effected by gender. Most such research, however, has used adult participants. An exception

to this is Froh et al.’s (2009b) study of 154 children aged 11 to 13, which found that whilst

girls did still tend to report more gratitude, boys appeared to derive greater social benefit

from the gratitude they did express when levels of family support were taken into

consideration. The current study did not consider the content of participants’ diary entries

and is therefore unable to comment on the quantity or quality of gratitude expressed, nor the

level of enthusiasm for this activity; our finding, however, lends some possible support to the


suggestion that boys might in some ways benefit more from practising gratitude regularly

than girls. Further research could examine this in more detail and, if strong evidence emerges

to support the notion, consider also whether it remains true of males across the lifespan.

The result of a decrease in SoSB and gratitude in the neutral event diary group was also

unexpected. There are several possibilities for why this result occurred. Firstly, despite

random allocation to each intervention, there was some indication that the event group had

higher mean scores of both gratitude and SoSB at pre-intervention compared to the gratitude

group. Secondly, although control participants were asked to write about any event in the

school day, they could have chosen to write about negative events, which could have had a

negative effect on both gratitude and SoSB. This would make the control group in the current

study comparable to the hassle diary in both Emmons & McCullough (2003) and Froh et al.

(2008). However, in these studies significant declines were not observed. A coded analysis

of diary entries would be needed to establish the content of the diary entries and explore these

hypotheses. Finally, the fact that the gratitude diary intervention and the control intervention

were occurring in the same classes could have been an issue, if participants became aware

that they were in different groups.

It has been suggested that gratitude is a concept that begins to emerge in middle

childhood (Froh et al., 2007). The age at which gratitude can be understood is an important

consideration when designing gratitude interventions and represents an area for future

research. It has been highlighted that there needs to be further validations of scales that

measure gratitude in children (Froh et al., 2011). The modified measure used in this study had

lower reliability than the validated scale and this could limit the conclusions that can be

drawn. To overcome this it would have been useful to conduct a pilot of the questionnaire to

establish whether participants understood the questions and if any modifications could have

improved its validity.


The study suggests a number of implications for school and educational psychologists,

who are well-placed to extend this research and to advise schools and colleges on evidence-

based interventions at the level of individual, group, whole class and whole-school

implementation. First, gratitude should not be regarded as simply a verbal expression taught

to children and reflecting a social politeness, but rather as a psychological mechanism that

can promote positive emotions, social wellbeing and, potentially, academic outcomes.

Second, the gratitude diary represents a straightforward, low cost and low resource

intervention that can be used by school staff to increase pupils’ felt gratitude towards school

and has the potential to promote school belonging. If this intervention can be shown to

promote positive outcomes over the long-term, it has the potential to be a proactive

intervention that can support pupils’ wellbeing and ability to manage school transitions and

other challenges that arise.

Finally, the gratitude diary is an intervention with the potential to be used at the whole-

school level as well as class, small group and individual. An important area for future

research should be to examine whether a school-wide gratitude diary intervention has a

system-wide impact on factors such as pro-social behaviour, SoSB, positive relationships and

wellbeing. Emerging evidence suggests that there are benefits of including staff as well as

pupils. Gratitude diary interventions have been associated with a reduction in teacher

burnout (Chan, 2011, Chan, 2013). It has been suggested that when teachers are coached to

increase the frequency in which they express gratitude towards their pupils, it can have a

positive impact on the quality of relationships with their pupils (Howells, 2013). Recent

research by Lambert et al. (2013) demonstrated that sharing a gratitude diary with a partner is

more effective than doing a gratitude diary alone, and a large scale implementation could

lend itself well to the regular sharing of selected diary entries with a ‘gratitude partner’. This

eco-systemic increase in gratitude could establish a positive feedback loop where an


individual’s increase in gratitude and positive reflection about school could create a thriving

school environment (Bono & Froh, 2009).


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